EW: Info On Starkiller Base, General Hux, BB-8, Rey and Finn

For the third day in a row Entertainment Weekly has posted additional articles to promote their issue out on newsstands now for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This time the articles provide a tidbit about the Death Star like Starkiller Base, First Order General Hux, info on BB-8, and background on Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega). The highlights are below or click these links for the full articles: Starkiller Base & General Hux | BB-8 | Rey and Finn

Starkiller Base
“It is very much — and it’s acknowledged as such in the movie — apparently another Death Star,” Abrams says. “But what it’s capable of, how it works, and what the threat is, is far greater than what the Death Star could have done. Starkiller Base is another step forward, technologically speaking, in terms of power.” (My note: In sci-fi, the only step after destroying a planet is destroying a sun aka a star)

General Hux
Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina), who plays the young military leader, says this commander of the First Order is defined by arrogance and contempt. “There’s an air of superiority, and being better than those people around you,” he says. “He’s pretty ruthless. A strong disciplinarian would be a mild way of putting it.”

What’s the appeal of the First Order to Hux? “It’s in the title: order,” Gleeson says. “It’s a desire to lump everything in its place and just have power. The desire for power is hugely motivating for a lot of people and normally the people who want all the power are not the ones who should have it.”

“He’s kind of opposite Kylo Ren,” Gleeson says. “They have their own relationship, which is individual and unusual. One of them is strong in different ways than the other. They’re both vying for power.”

BB-8
- Based on a sketch by JJ Abrams of "a ball with this little dome on top."
- Based designed with different shaped panels so can track direction BB-8 is moving
- Technically BB-8 doesn't have a gender but "BB-8 was female in our eyes. And then he or she became male" according to Neal Scanlan who helped design the character.
- “I think he knows he’s cute. He knows that he can win people over. And he uses that like children do to get his own way. In this film, he has a very important mission that he has to accomplish and so he uses his personality, his coyness, and all of those things.”
- BB-8 does have panels that can hide things (much like R2D2) but exactly what has been left undefined for future movies.

Rey and Finn
- Both are essentially war orphans. He was a child soldier, bred to wear the white armor of a stormtrooper and fight and die, if necessary, on behalf of The First Order. She was abandoned at age 5 on the desert world of Jakku, and has been waiting ever since to be reclaimed.
- Ridley says “[Rey] has a boss, she has someone to answer to, she has to trade the junk for food, and that’s how it has to be. She works to feed herself, and she goes to sleep, and she gets up again. It is a sad life.”
- Boyega says. “[Finn] wants to change. He wants to make a difference. He’s trying to find some kind of moral dignity in this war.”
- There was one other awkward moment. “Um, probably when I sat in his pilot seat,” Ridley says. “There’s a shot where I pilot the Falcon by myself. And then [on another day] Harrison and I went to film together. I went to get into the pilot seat and he was like, ‘That’s mine,’ and I was genuinely mortified. And J.J. was sitting there like, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ And, you know, I moved into the co-pilot seat.”
- In front of the cameras, he was given a much more elaborate prop. “That’s when I got the real saber, which is blue, it’s lighted, and just looks really epic,” Boyega says. “It felt monumental in my hand. I knew not to play like I used to when I was a kid, but to actually use it in serious combat for a scene. It’s absolutely crazy to have in your hand. It’s a bit heavy but it’s worth it. “